It’s harder to get endless pasta at Olive Garden than to vote in 26 states

Two days ago, Olive Garden debuted a pasta lover’s dream: a “Never-Ending Pasta Pass” that allowed 10,000 lucky pass holders, for the low, low price of $100, to have unlimited access to 120 different pasta dishes (including endless soup or salad and breadsticks) for thirteen weeks this fall. Such a deal for the lucky people who acted fast (it’s already sold out).

Read more Forget global warming. How do we fix the droughts?

This is not a new promotion. However, this year, what made the Olive Garden promotion newsworthy is that, even as Trump revealed on Thursday that many U.S. elections are vulnerable to and even riddled with fraud and foreign interference, the Olive Garden’s firmly ruled that there can be no pasta access without a a valid photo ID:

Naturally, people noticed the incongruity of Olive Garden’s strictures versus the collapse of our constitutional republic into a banana republic. Sardonic observations and memes flowed with the speed and richness of those unlimited pasta dishes. Here are some of the best:

It’s all funny…and tragic. The Constitution, at Article IV, Sec. 2, mandates that our government must ensure that we have a “Republican Form of Government.” Unfortunately, in 2026, that does not mean a Republican Party government. (While the GOP is no great shakes, it’s better than the Dems and the DSA.)

Instead, as the Founders understood that term, this phrase had a very specific meaning. James Madison explained in The Federalist Papers: No. 39,

…we may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior. It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.

In other words, the citizens of a nation vote for their political leaders, and it must be understood by all that the people did in fact cast those votes. Otherwise, the government is illegitimate.

In a time when most Americans lived in small, rural communities or close-knit neighborhoods in cities, no one doubted that the man who cast a vote was who he said he was. However, in today’s vast communities, where neighbors are strangers to each other, only a photo ID can confirm a person’s identity, ensuring the republican government our Constitution demands.

Because (mostly) Democrat governance in 26 states has done away with photo ID to vote, you know fraud is inevitable, and this fraud denies you and me our republican form of government. Thus, we have no way of knowing whether our votes are being nullified by China or by a handful of tyrannical leftists.

As for me, all I know is that I have very good reason to doubt whether any of the Democrats in Congress are rightfully there. For this reason, I rightly fear tyranny whenever they cast their votes—and that’s no joke.

Read more Satire: President Trump’s election integrity and national security address shunned by mainstream media outlets

Image created using AI.